Its beginning to look a lot like public radio at WBEZ | Chicago Tribune

So WBEZ had music in its sights for much of the year, but in the end, it couldn't pull the trigger.

The Chicago public radio station (FM 91.5) has posted its new, news-and-talk schedule, and the surprise is that so much music survives, although very little of it is jazz. It was the threatened death of WBEZ's voluminous jazz programming that caused so much (well-mannered) furor when the plans were announced earlier this year.

Not from me, I was totally ecstatic when I heard WBEZ was cutting back on the evening-and-weekend afternoon jazz. I like big band music, I like some kinds of "smooth jazz," but the stuff played in the evenings turned me off, so I turned BEZ off.

The schedule, viewable in full at www.wbez.org and debuting Jan. 8, strikes me as pretty canny, with weak performers (sorry, Michael Feldman) being bumped or moved to less prominent places, some promising newcomers entering the lineup (Bob Edwards returns, in a fashion) and perhaps enough music left in to keep aggrieved hepcats from open revolt.

Or maybe not. The WBEZ message board, at its Web site, is well heated by people who continue to insist that their particular underrepresented music genre should have held on to its nights-and-overnights spot.

 

Well, I would have been even happier if they'd picked up "Thistle and Shamrock," but I'm happy enough. My husband David and I have actually travelled up to Madison to see Michael Feldman tape/broadcast What'Ya Know? and it can be a weak show if the guests are "off" and the audience members tapped for the quiz or for short conversations with Michael are "off." I think its particular brand of quirky humor goes a long way in shorter portions – it would work really well as an hour show.

There is a bone or two in the schedule for jazz aficionados, but there's actual meat for people like me who welcomed the planned move as a more pure expression of what public radio does best.

Legendary deejay Dick Buckley keeps a version of his jazz show, a scant hour on Sunday afternoons, and "Ken Nordine's Word Jazz"survives, at midnight Sunday and Monday.

God. When the hell is Ken Nordine going to just… go away. I won't say "die," but really, the less of that syrupy rumbling navel-gazing I have to hear, the better. Nordine was last cool in the Seventies, when he did a series of memorable Levi's ads. That was a long time ago, people. And Dick Buckley with his meticulously time-and-date-stamped catalogue of "good old good ones" no doubt performs a public service for serious jazz fans, who apparently want to know who the second trumpeter was that time that Drizz Biederhoncker and His Hot Brass Quartet performed at the Blue Elephant in 1947. But an hour of Dick is about right for the rest of us, who happen to have a pulse.

On Friday nights, music shows "Passport" and "Afropop Worldwide" also live on, following, rather nicely, out of "Sound Opinions," the rock talk show that should be a good fit in its new home after "This American Life."

Repeating "Opinions" and "Life" the next morning, however, seems like too much too soon. But will I appreciate something better to listen to beginning at 11 a.m. Saturdays than Feldman's tired "Whad'Ya Know," now moving to the post-Garrison Keillor, Saturday-night slot? Yes, I will.

Okay, I can live with this. I won't listen to "Sound Opinions" much, though. I often end up catching only part of "This American Life" before moving on to much more excellent Friday night sci-fi TV viewing. I rarely get to listen to Afropop, same reason. This doesn't stop me from rapturously repeating the hosts' name every time I hear a promo during my drive time. I know his name is spelled something like "Georges Collinet," but I just like saying it as I drive. "Zhozsh Kalleenay. Zhozsh Kalleenay. Zhozsh Kalleenay." It's almost as fun to say as "I'm Core-y Flint-off."

The music newcomer (Marian McPartland is out, by the way) is "American Routes," a two-hour show out of New Orleans that'll air Saturday afternoons and just happens to serve the underrepresented music I'm most interested in hearing, American roots music, including some jazz. The playlists and interviews look to be exceptional.

Marian McPartland is out! Marian McPartland is out! Marian McPartland is out! This is excellent news, indeed. No more of that rather pretentious, faux-British accent going on and on about some new talent that she's introducing to a jazz-hungry and undeserving world. No more youthful jazz prodigies earnestly playing, note for note, every slavishly copied piano riff. She was another reason to tune out for the day on Sundays, or switch over to WXRT. 

And I'm very happy to hear "American Routes" is coming; when we go on road trips, we often encounter it. We heard some really excellent music and interviews on that show when we were driving around Colorado and Southern Utah. We happened to catch a post-Katrina retrospective show that gave me goose bumps – it really made the miles fly. It's good stuff, Maynard.

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But despite more music shows than the station seemed to want to air at first, this is definitely a news-talk schedule. On that front, the weekday morning lineup remains the same. But in the afternoon, competent but underwhelming California talk show "To the Point" is out, replaced by NPR call-in show "Talk of the Nation."

Heh, "competent but underwhelming" is too right. My morning drives are pleasant; my evening drives vary depending on whether I get out of work "on time" or not. I sometimes hear "To the Point" if I take a really, really late lunch and have to drive off-site to get it.

The first-rate news show "The World" moves back from afternoons to its old 7 p.m. slot, replacing, and not a moment too soon, the tepid Canadian newsmagazine "As It Happens." How I'll miss those detailed discussions of Parliament's wheat policy!

You and me brutha. Hee! "Tepid!" Hee hee! That show has the dorkiest, datedest Seventies-junior-high-prom-DJ-in-widelegged-cuffed-pants-and-a-clip-on-velvet-bowtie theme music evarrr. The one time it was interesting, the two female hosts interviewed some guy that was in a boat rowing or sailing across the Atlantic, on the final leg of a more or less solo round-the-world trek by bicycle. He had started out cycling around the globe with a friend, met a girl, settled down with her to wait out the winter in Russia, fought with the friend, started traveling again, lost the girl, lost the friend, rejoined the friend, and ended up alone in a tiny boat, talking to Canadian radio presenters by satellite phone. They played clips from previous conversations with him to fill in the story. That was the first episode I ever heard, and the last good one.

UPDATE: Someone in Blogaria is really interested in the Canadian Wheat Board. This post got automatically linked because it contained the words "canadian" and "wheat." Ooops, I did it again. Bet they're pissed that "As It Happens" is going off the air in Chicago, too.

Previously in that time slot was "The World," which makes a most welcome return. I like chanting along with the drum riff that ends the musical theme and "bumper" between segments: "Da-da-danh-danh, dunh-dunh."

Then the daytime shows "Eight Forty-Eight," "Worldview" and "Fresh Air" repeat between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., to try to catch the folks who were at work during the first airings. Again, it seems a heavy thumb is on the repeat scale, a place where the station is vulnerable to criticism, but the theory behind it is sound.

Woo!!! "Worldview" is a great, great news and world affairs show. It used to be on at the time I most often had lunch, and as I'm often in the car driving off-site to eat, I really enjoyed my hour of lunch and learn, Worldview style. The host always comes up with really interesting guests and insights, and the issues they discuss are often unlike anything else in the news, and really important and under-reported. And we rarely get to listen to "Fresh Air," unless we're on vacation. This means that I'll actually turn the radio on in the evenings, if there's nothing to watch on TV. 

What's missing is more effort from the WBEZ news department, a nightly half-hour, say, on the day in Chicago. But the "Eight Forty-Eight" repeat will at least give more exposure to what seems destined to remain the station's primary local-coverage effort.

More intriguing is "Global Overnight," a nightly four-hour assemblage of news from other countries, not just the BBC. That runs in the insomniacs and second-shifters spot, from midnight to 4 a.m., when the news cycle starts over.

As for Edwards, no, he hasn't been brought back to replace Chucklin' Steve Inskeep on "Morning Edition." But a two-hour highlight package of his XM Radio interview show runs Sundays at noon.

The net result of all this: When I turn on WBEZ, at almost any time of any day, I'll hear some attempt at news reporting or informed discussion, a powerful counterweight to what passes for talk radio elsewhere on the dial.

And the music that's there will come as seasoning, rather than the filler it felt like in the current schedule.

Even if you flipped on the station and caught a jazz tune you liked, it felt like something different than public radio. This schedule has the look and feel of what I, at least, think of as public radio.

Good enough. I could wish for a late-night music show like "Echoes" or "Hearts of Space," but another public radio station that a-a-allllmost comes in clearly plays those when I feel like chilling out or taking a bath before bedtime with "new age" music to help me sleep. I agree that the schedule is much more "public radio-y" especially in light of all the programming we've heard on road trips – oh, for E-town or World Cafe or any of a number of fine public radio shows I've encountered over the years. I wish there was some folk/Celtic/eclectic music on the weekends, and even a little classical, but I realize that WBEZ can never be KUNC, which will always be a favorite of mine because of its associations with many happy Colorado road trips over the years.